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SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION AND RANKING
Everyone wants a website that ranks highly in Google and other search engines (here after referred to collectively as Google). In the old days a knowledgeable web designer could take a no-name company and create a website for them that jumped right to the top of the search engine rankings. Not any more.
Today Google has some of the best in the business making sure your searches return the best results. They even use factors that no on can change like how long your site has existed.
But don't despair. There still are ways to get a site to the top of the rankings, and in cases where that is not possible, Google's, pay-per-click advertising is still a cost effective way to achieve the same results.
#1 LINKS, LINKS, LINKS
By far the most important factor that you can change to raise your search engine ranking is encouraging other important websites to link to you. Important websites have lots of other websites that link back to them. It seems simple, but it has been a very effective and democratic way to rank sites.
What does this mean for you? It means that you need to contact all of the businesses that you work with and ask them to add a link to your website. Especially the companies that already have a large web presence. If snow.com (Vail Resorts) links to your website, it will have a much greater effect than if TwoGuysPlumming.com links to your website, but every link helps. It also helps if those links use the key search words. For instance the link to a real estate company should read "Vail Real Estate" because those are the words that a person would enter into Google.
It is also important to not that ranking to disreputable companies can also work against you.
#2 CONTENT AND THE USE OF KEYWORDS
Google uses a formula to evaluate the relevance of your website to the keywords that a person is searching for. It is even smart enough to know most common synonyms. For this reason it is importnat to write with the search engines in mind. See my writing for search engine optimization (SEO) page for details.
Not only the substance of the site, but the size of the site is taken into consideration. Larger sites, with more content are considered more important. Adding a Blog to your site may be an effective way to increase your content and rankings, but only if you are willing to constantly add relevant information to it.
#3 TITLE AND DESCRIPTION
Two of the factors on your website that you still have control over are the Title and Description. These two items are weighted more heavily than the rest of the content on a page and can be adjusted for each page. They are also important because they appear in the search results, and therefore help searchers decide if your link is worth clicking on. They must be kept short and keywords should be pushed towards the front of them.
WELL DESIGNED SITES STILL RANK BETTER
Even if all of these
best practices are followed, a poorly coded website can ruin it all. Every website back-end should be built with search engines in mind. Search Engine Optimization is built into every website at Hunnell Web Design, even if you didn't ask for it. It just makes sense to do it right the first time.
Find out more about Improving your search engine rankings
Find out more about writing for search engine optimization (SEO)
Find out more about pay-per-click
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